Hi,
I need a bit of help here about email I will call them clients, i.e. Thunderbird and Evolution ,first let me explain a friend of my has an email address with AOL as we all know they closing down so he wants to moved over to a new client, so as he understands it AOL will not support the messaging service indefinitely so he choose Thunderbird, but if he requires a new email address will he have to purchase this, which is how it appears to me.
If you don’t mind Google then Gmail is very good. Free, with very good spam filters and works fine with Thunderbird. Also can be used across several platforms - smartphones etc. Set up a Google account then simply email everyone in your address book (that you wish to know the new address) and you’re up and running. You can take it wherever you want as you’re not tied to a particular provider, as is the case with your friend. By the way, AOL is the service provider that ‘owns’ the email address - Thunderbird is the open-source (Mozilla) client that allows you to read and write and send/receive the mails.
I’ve used Gmail for years without any issues. 
Hope this helps
Rich
Yep, just get him to sign up for a free gmail account (but there are many other free ones too) … he then doesn’t require an email “client”, he can just access his mail via the internet.
Or if he prefers having his mail locally, as Rich J suggests, Thunderbird can act as a client with his gmail account.
Thank you all for your help, it’s as I thought I have pass on the information and he now Gmail.